The Canaries' oldest living player met Babe Ruth and got a hit off Don Larsen

The Canaries wanted to honor a "hometown hero" for Friday night’s home opener at the Birdcage.

Don Toft was the perfect choice.

The 95-year-old Toft isn’t just a World War II veteran, he’s believed to be the oldest living Canary, having played two seasons for an earlier iteration of the minor league baseball franchise in 1947 and 1948. The Birds were a Class C affiliate of the Chicago Cubs back then, and Toft was a patient, contact-hitting infielder who’d grown up loving the game. He played in 34 games at third base for the Canaries in 1947, batting .239, then, after a stint playing in Canada where he hit .302, returned to Sioux Falls for the 1948 season and batted .260 with a .402 on-base percentage in 93 games as the team’s shortstop.

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A Humboldt native and longtime Sioux Falls resident, Toft has been to dozens of Canaries games over the years, and was back there with more than 30 friends and family when he was honored in the third inning to celebrate his contributions in both military service and as a link to the old days of Canaries baseball.

Don and his wife of 67 years, Flo, couldn’t have been more excited for their day of recognition at the Birdcage.

“I don’t really know what to expect,” Toft said earlier this week when asked about the honors coming his way. “I didn’t ask for it. But here it comes. I’m pretty excited.”

A lifetime of baseball memories

Even at 95, Don is still an active participant in his life and the lives of his family. He’s a regular reader of the sports pages, a Twins and Vikings fan, and quick to brag about his 12 grandchildren and 14 (soon to be 15) great-grandchildren. He and Flo live independently at Prairie Creek Lodge in Sioux Falls, and they welcomed in a visitor earlier this week to talk baseball. Toft’s hearing isn’t what it used to be, but otherwise he excitedly and easily recounted dozens of memories from a lifetime of loving the game and serving his community.

Among his favorites:

► He got a hit off Don Larsen, the former Yankee pitcher who threw the first perfect game in World Series history.

“It’s true, I did,” he said bashfully after his son, Jeff, had offered up the memento. “But he threw it right down the middle.”

► He met Babe Ruth, when the Great Bambino stopped in Sioux Falls to catch a connecting flight in 1948, shortly before Ruth’s death that same year.

“The guys at the Argus called me to go out and get a picture taken with him and a few kids,” Don remembers. “He was very sick. But he was very congenial.”

► He played on some of the first baseball fields built in Germany while serving there.

“I spent as much time as I could trying to play baseball while I was in the service,” Don says.

One of his prized possessions is a photograph of him in the batter’s box on a diamond in Germany with a small house in the background.

► His good friend, Ross “Bumps” Horning, was traded to Duluth while the Canaries were warming up to play them. He crossed the field to the other dugout and put on his new uniform, and the Canaries catcher, feeling sympathy for Horning, told him what pitchers were coming in that day’s game.

“He got a few hits that day,” Don remembers. Horning would later be among the first players to challenge baseball’s anti-trust exemption over his objections to how he was treated, and later became a professor of history.

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Don Toft's life after baseball

Toft made the Canaries through a tryout. They played games every day, with doubleheaders on Sundays and holidays. That ’47 team went 75-43 and averaged almost 2,000 fans a game playing at Howard Wood Field (no, not the same one in use today – it was downtown and demolished in the 1950s).

The Birds took a dive in ’48, going 45-75, though one of that team’s pitchers, lefty Lou Sleater, would reach the majors three years later, where he was a teammate of Satchell Paige for the St. Louis Browns.

Toft was released after the 1948 season. He would play three more years of semipro ball before settling in Sioux Falls, where he worked for years at the YMCA. It was there he met Flo, who was there bowling.

“I popped in for a look, and I was smitten right away,” Don says.

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He spent time as the director of the popular Camp Tepeetonka, and for years was instrumental in organizing the regionally famous Tri-State youth basketball tournament.

Toft stayed active, winning senior competitions for jump roping and free-throw shooting, and though he remained a baseball obsessive over the years, he never boasted about his own accomplishments.

“This is how modest Don is,” Flo says with a mixture of pride and bemusement. “I never even knew he’d played for the Canaries until after we’d been married for a long time. Someone brought it up to him in front of me and I was like, ‘What?”

Don waves his hand dismissively and laughs.

“We were plenty talkative,” he says with a loving glance at Flo. “We always had plenty of other things to talk about.”

Even at 95, Don is still going strong. He and Flo enjoyed watching the women’s basketball postseason runs by USD and SDSU this spring, and were excited to see the new turf and video boards at the Birdcage. There’s been talk of a new ballpark being built downtown one day, and Don says he hopes to live long enough to attend a game there.

“I just love sports,” he says. “Athletics have always been very important to us. And it makes me feel good to see how far athletics in (South Dakota) have come.”